Quotes About Policy

In a meat industry trade publication, an Alabama poultry science professor explained why we don't have such a "heavy-handed" policy: "The American consumer is not going to pay that much. It's as simple as that." If the industry had to pay to make it safer, the price would go up. "The fact," he said, "is that it's too expensive not to sell salmonella-positive chicken."99

It's bad enough that most medical schools don't even require a single course on nutrition,58 but it's even worse when mainstream medical organizations actively lobby against increased nutrition education for physicians.59

We never announced a scorched-earth policy; we never announced any policy at all, apart from finding and destroying the enemy, and we proceeded in the most obvious way. We used what was at hand, dropping the greatest volume of explosives in the history of warfare over all the terrain within the thirty-mile sector which fanned out from Khe Sanh. Employing saturation-bombing techniques, we delivered more than 110,000 tons of bombs to those hills during the eleven-week containment of Khe Sanh.

Not only does free trade have nothing to do with democracy, but in most cases throughout history the two have been inimical. Free trade prospered only at the expense of democracy and the freedom of the majority.

Staff members accused the IMF of violating its rules by making bad loans "to states unable to repay their debts," simply to pay bankers and bondholders.

Junk Economics is the cover story for all this. Claiming to be scientific, it is sponsored by financial interests to redistribute income and wealth upward, reversing the policies urged by the 19th-century classical economists and Progressive Era reformers. Instead of progressive taxation, this ideology advocates shifting taxes off the One Percent onto the 99 Percent.

This is the political dimension of the mathematics of compound interest. It is the pro-rentier policy that the French Physiocrats and British liberals sought to reverse by clearing away the legacy of European feudalism.

Today's mainstream political and economic theories deny a positive role for government policy to constrain the large-scale concentration of wealth.

The basic principle that should guide economic policy is recognition that debts which can't be paid, won't be. The great political question is, how won't they be paid?

The euro and the ECB were designed in a way that blocks government money creation for any purpose other than to support the banks and bondholders. Their monetary and fiscal straitjacket obliges the eurozone economies to rely on bank creation of credit and debt. The financial sector takes over the role of economic planner, putting its technicians in charge of monetary and fiscal policy without democratic voice or referendums over debt and tax policies.

A return to classical bank policy would deem loans fraudulent and annul debts when creditors do not lend with any reasonable calculation of how the debt can be paid in the normal course of economic life. Loans made without such a calculation should be considered predatory. The natural check on such behavior is to permit mortgage debtors to walk away from their homes, free of the debts attached to them, letting title revert to the banks that over-lent.

El Estado no debería ratificar —con sus políticas o sus leyes— ninguna concepción determinada de la vida buena, sino proporcionar un marco neutral de derechos, dentro del cual las personas puedan escoger sus propios valores y fines.

La concepción tecnocrática de la política está ligada a una fe en los mercados; no necesariamente en un capitalismo sin límites, de laissez faire, pero sí en la idea más general de que los mecanismos de mercado son los instrumentos primordiales para conseguir el bien público.

In the modern world, as Polanyi pointed out, the concept of a 'free' market is a construct of economic theory, not an empirical observation.39 Indeed, he observed that the national capitalist market was effectively forced into existence through public policy—there was nothing 'natural' or universal about it.40

The orthodox prescription of 'fiscal austerity'—cutting public spending in an attempt to reduce public deficits and debt—has not restored Western economies to health, and economic policy has signally failed to deal with the deep-lying and long-term weaknesses which beset them.

We must take action now, by permitting re-importation, to ensure that health care and prescription drugs remain accessible and affordable for everyone.

Fighting DC is like arresting the street dealer, who is the end point in the drug trade. It's the most visible aspect of the problem, sure, but it doesn't address the source of the spreading contamination.

With the American people facing an epidemic of obesity andnhardened arteries, the "People's Department" [USDA, United States Department of Agriculture) doesn't regulate fat as much as it grants the [food] industry's every wish. Indeed when it comes to the greatest sources of fat--meant and cheese--the Department of Agriculture has joined industry as a full partner in the most urgent mission of all: cajoling the people to eat more.

Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.

End affirmative action. We've had a black president, black cabinet members from both parties, a black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Until we respect bin Laden, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary.

Oppenheimer explained that nuclear weapons had created a revolution in foreign policy. No defense against them was possible, only deterrence, or frightening away adversaries through the threat of assured destruction.

Being a good, innovative librarian means taking a humanistic stance toward policy, decision-making, and experimentation. It means focusing on the heart.

The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession. Ben Bernanke January 10, 2008